now i've gone and done it

After years of hemming and hawing and trying really hard not to need one, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a cell phone of my own today.

Backstory: seven years ago, a friend gave a pay-as-you-go, candy-bar style cell phone to me and Sweetie, topped up with some minutes and assigned an Oregon area code, just so he could find us at a very large folk festival without having to scan a crowd of 40,000 people. Since then, we have used the phone sporadically, mostly for travel; and I have dutifully taken it to Radio Shack and paid cash every ninety days to top it off and keep the number from expiring.

Problem is, Radio Shack is going to stop supporting this phone (or, more precisely, the -- ugh -- bangs brain for memory -- Service Provider? YES! That's it!) VERY soon. This means that I won't be able to buy any more time on the thing and the phone number will expire in October.

Second problem is that I am returning to synagogue teaching work this fall. In and of itself that's NOT a problem; in fact I'm really looking forward to teaching again. But the religious school has done away with walkie-talkies in the classrooms and expects every teacher to instead have his/her cell-phone on their person.

Small detail: I haven't had a cell-phone of my own. I only had the one Sweetie and I "shared" (which meant we argued about who HAD to carry it rather than who GOT to carry it -- and that was only when one of us felt a need to carry it at all, which wasn't often).

Clearly it was time for me to get one of my own.

So after looking at my options, and asking slightly nervous questions of my sister (who knows nearly everything about nearly everything, as older siblings often do), and getting her to promise that she would hold my hand during the learning process, I went ahead and bought myself a cell phone. I don't plan to text -- too expensive, eats up minutes -- and won't be using the Bluetooth or camera features (seriously?). All I want to do is make and receive phone calls. I'm hoping this won't be too tough.

But it IS a huge change for me, to go from cell-phone relative freedom to being sort of tied to one. I hope it won't be a mistake.